Chapter 89 Chapter 87

The fireplace in the living room of the Château de la Villette was cold, but Lieutenant Collet walked up and down in front of it, reading a fax he had received from Interpol. Everything was beyond his expectation. According to official records, André Vernet was a model citizen.The police do not have any criminal records against him, not even a ticket for parking violations.He was educated in preparatory schools and the University of Paris, and obtained a degree in international finance with honors.According to Interpol, Vernet's name was regularly featured in newspapers, and it was always positive news.Apparently, this person had been involved in the design of the security system of the Savings Bank of Zurich, making it the world leader in electronic security systems today.According to Vernet's personal credit card, he was a lover of art books, a lover of all kinds of expensive wines; Apparently, he listened to the music with the special advanced stereo system he bought a few years ago.

nothing.Collet couldn't help sighing. Tonight, judging from the information provided by Interpol, the only bright spot was obviously the fingerprints left by Teabing's servants.Across the room, the chief prosecutor of the PTS sat in a comfortable chair, reading the investigative materials handed in. Collet looked over. "Have you discovered anything new?" Prosecutor shrugged: "Here's Remy Legruder's fingerprints. He's arraigned for a petty crime. No big deal. Looks like he reinstalled the jack to get free calls." Kong Er was kicked out of the school... Later he went to sneak around again, he was arrested and released, and he was arrested again. Once he had an emergency tracheotomy, he even tampered with the bill issued by the hospital." He said. He raised his head and giggled. "What about an allergic reaction to peanut oil?"

Collet nodded. He remembered the time the police went to a restaurant to investigate. The restaurant did not state on the menu that the meat sauce contained peanut oil.As a result, a guest sat down on the table and took a bite, and died suddenly due to an allergic reaction to peanut oil. "Legrude may live here to avoid being arrested." The prosecutor said with a very happy look: "He was lucky enough that night." Collet sighed and said, "Okay, you'd better go talk to Captain Fache." The prosecutor stopped him, just as another PTS agent hurried in. "Lieutenant, we found something in the barn."

Judging from the eager look on the agent's face, Collet could only guess that someone's body might have been found. "No, sir, it's more—" he hesitated for a moment: "something surprising." Collet wiped his eyes and followed the agent to the barn.They entered the musty, cavernous place, and the agent walked to the center of the room, where a wooden ladder led high up to the rafters, abutting against a hayloft that hung high above their heads. "The ladder wasn't there before." Collet said quietly. "Yes, sir. I got the ladder up. Just now, when everyone was collecting the footprints left by the scene near the Rolls car, I saw the ladder fell on the ground. If I didn't see the rung in the middle of the ladder Broken and moldy, I don't think much of it. The ladder is no other special use. It just reached the hut, so I set it up and climbed up to see."

Collet looked over the steeply sloping ladder, and his eyes finally fell on the thatched shed that was high above the ground.Do people often climb on it?Looking up from here, the thatched shed looks like an empty stage, but it is obviously difficult to see its whole picture from here. A senior PTS agent appears at the top of the wooden ladder, leaning over to look down. "Lieutenant, you must be eager to come up and take a look." He waved at Collet with his rubber-gloved left hand.Collet nodded wearily, stepped under the battered ladder, and grabbed the bottom rung.The ladder was designed in the old-fashioned cone shape, and the ladder became narrower the higher Collet climbed.When Collet was about to climb to the top of the ladder, he stepped on a small rung, and his body almost lost his balance. Suddenly, he felt the barn below him spinning in front of his eyes.So he raised his vigilance, continued to climb, and finally climbed to the top of the ladder.The agent who was already up there held out his hand to him.Collet reached out and grabbed it, and then reluctantly came to the platform of the grass shed.

"Here, it's over there." The PTS agent pointed to the spotless attic inside and said, "Going forward from here, we only found a few footprints, but we will use them for identification right away." With the faint light, Collet squinted at the distant wall.So what is it?On the wall far away from them, a well-equipped computer workstation was built-it consisted of two tower-like central processing units, a flat-screen video monitor with speakers, a hard drive, and a multi-channel TV set. Consists of audio control equipment that appears to be charged. Who the hell came to this place to do such a thing?Collet walked towards the opposite side and asked, "Have you noticed that set of equipment?"

"That's the listening whistle." Collet felt a little dizzy: "Are you talking about bugs?" The agent nodded. "Yes, a very advanced bug." He gestured to a design table piled high with electronic parts, how-to guides, instruments, wires, soldering sticks, and many other electronic components. "The man knew exactly what he was doing. Many of the instruments here are as advanced as ours, including miniature microphones, rechargeable photocells, and high-capacity random access memory chips. He even owns What about the new microdrives?" This left a deep impression on Collet.

"It's a complete system," the agent said, handing Collet a device not much bigger than a pocket calculator.From it hung a wire about a foot long, at the end of which was glued a postage stamp-sized piece of metal foil as thin as sticky paper. "It is mainly composed of a high-capacity hard disk recording system equipped with a rechargeable battery. The metal sheet at the end of the wire is a device that combines the functions of a microphone and a photoelectric rechargeable battery." Collet knew them well.Going back a few years, these thin sheet metal microphones that used photovoltaic cells were technically a huge breakthrough at the time.Today, hard disk recording equipment can be placed behind, say, lamps, and foil-sized microphones can be embedded in the base of the lamp and dyed to match.As long as such a microphone is installed so that it can receive hours of sunlight every day, the photocell will continue to charge the system, and a bug like this can continue to be used without any restrictions.

"What about the receiving method?" Collet asked. The agent gestured toward an insulated wire that ran from the back of the computer, up the wall and through a hole in the barn roof. "They are picked up by simple electromagnetic waves, using a small antenna on the roof." Collet knew that these recording devices were usually placed in the office and activated by sound in order to save hard disk space; during the day, they were used to record clips of other people's conversations, and at night, to avoid being discovered, they were re-activated. Send the compressed sound file; the hard drive is then automatically cleaned up, ready to record again the next day.He shifted his gaze to the shelves filled with hundreds of audio cassettes, all dated and numbered.Someone has been busy.He turned to the agent and asked, "Do you know who they're listening to?"

"Well, Captain," said the agent, walking up to the computer and launching a piece of software, "the weirdest thing I find is..."